


Square the Edges

by Anonymous



Series: Snowy/Kent [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Consent Issues, D/s-verse, M/M, Past Abuse, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 17:53:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14170338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After being traded to the Aces in the wake of the sub abuse scandal and as part of a team clean-up effort, Swoops drops in unannounced on Snowy and Kent. Snowy hadn't realized he and Kent were pals. Also what else a clean-up effort might entail, if approached from a certain perspective.





	Square the Edges

Troy, either because he's decent or confused or both, takes a long detour out of his move to Vegas to drop in on Snowy and Kent in Providence. He opens with, "Is this weird? That I'm here?" as soon as Snowy opens the door. His hands are jammed in his pockets and his shoulders are hunched, face sheepish like he's only just realized how bad an idea this is now that he's standing on Snowy's doorstep and sort of wishes he could take it back, or do it differently.

"It's pretty fucking weird," Snowy decides. "Are you even an Ace?"

Troy gives him a look. He'd also been a part of that Cup team, and maybe like Snowy, also wondering just how tainted that ring is. He's probably having mixed feelings about going back, happy to be on a winning team like the Aces, and to play with Kent again, but miserable over the way it had happened, and probably uneasy about heading into the eye of the media storm swirling around Vegas.

"I'm an Ace _now_ ," Troy says. "How's Parser?"

Snowy sighs. 

"Carly said--"

"Fucking Carly."

Troy laughs. Shrugs. Snowy doesn't know what to do about the fact that Kent's going to go back to Vegas at the end of the summer, and Troy's a good guy, so there's no reason to alienate him. It's not clear how okay Kent _thinks_ he is, but if the miserable tail of the last season is anything to go by, he's going to need someone in his corner who's able to come up with solutions more nuanced than, _you wanna go, huh?_

"I don't know," Snowy finally answers. "Okay and not okay." He shrugs. "Come inside. You're letting all the cold air out."

Troy moves like he thought Snowy would never ask, and once he's inside spreads his arms to bask in the breeze of the air conditioner, coming to a stop in the middle of Snowy's living room and turning till he's broad-side to the airflow. "Fuck," he says, drawing the word out in almost obscene pleasure. "Fuck, man."

"You're going to die in Vegas," Snowy tells him.

Troy doesn't fold his arms back in, and instead throws his head back to catch as much cool air on his skin as possible. "I'm just going to sleep on the ice. If they try to send me home, I won't go."

"Tried it," Kent says, when Troy repeats the joke to him, wringing it for mileage. "They won't let you. They have ways to make you go." He's fucking with the barbeque, so Troy has to go back outside to talk to him, but at least this time he goes equipped with a cold drink. Kent has his crutch under one arm, for once, and a straw hat that he'd found in Snowy's closet, that he's been wearing around as some kind of extended chirp. He looks ridiculous, but Troy doesn't comment. "Are you here about the C?"

There's no answer for as long as it takes Kent to strike a match, toss it into his shittily prepared briquettes, then strike and toss another one, and then swear.

"That's not how you do it," Troy says, and takes a long drink.

"I fucking know how to do it, thanks," Kent snaps, and strikes a third match, that also doesn't take.

"Doesn't look like it."

Kent frowns, sulky scowl turned up to maximum settings--that's a habit he's been getting into, that Snowy mostly ignores--and tries a fourth match, but emphatically, like he's proving a point. It dies in a pathetic tendril of smoke, and Troy laughs, loud and assy. When Kent glares at him and grumbles, "Fucking bullshit," as he tries again, Snowy decides that he still likes Troy. He sort of remembers Kent being easy like this with him before too, that one season Snowy had spent in Vegas, when the two of them had played on the same line.

"What's this about the C?" Snowy asks, even though it's clear Kent's trying to have that conversation without Snowy knowing he's having it. Or he's trying to have it while somehow treating it like it's not a big deal, though in that case it's harder to tell if it's Snowy or himself he's trying to convince.

Troy shifts uncomfortably and doesn't answer. Kent pokes at the contents of the grill a bit, then shrugs and says, "Maybe more lighter fluid?"

"Maybe burn my house down in a giant fireball," Snowy says, and repeats, "What about the C?"

"No one's for it," Troy says, to Kent instead of Snowy, both of them clearly more informed than he is. "I know I haven't been on the team in a bit, but--" He stops to scratch at the side of his head. Having been on the team isn't the mark of authority that it had been prior to shit hitting the fan. "Anyway, I talked to some of the guys, and whatever you want to do, we've got your back."

Kent plays with another match, looking down at the box as he fumbles striking it, so that his face is hidden behind his hat. He's short enough that it's a pretty effective move. Snowy's starting to recognize it as a Parson preffered avoidance tactic.

"You've got a lot on your plate right now," Troy goes on, more hesitantly. Picking his words. "If you did want to step back for a little, no one would think anything of it."

Kent laughs. He doesn't look up, lighting a match and then another, just for something to do.

"Well," Troy corrects. " _We_ wouldn't think anything of it."

Snowy watches them for a while longer. Kent fiddling with the grill, and Troy standing quietly, drink set aside, and his hands in his pockets again. Snowy recognizes that suddenly as a dom trying to make himself unthreatening, or a big guy trying to make himself smaller by pulling his limbs in. Maybe both. Kent probably wouldn't appreciate it, if he'd been paying enough attention to notice, but at least it probably means that Troy intends that message at face value. That he's trying to be a friend, not subtly pressure Kent to step down.

"They're fucking asking him to give up the C?" Snowy demands, trying not to sound as pissed as he feels, because Kent tends to take anything involving him that results in anger as being his fault, or at least his responsibility, and then as his job to fix, and that's a direct path back into the tangle they're trying to get out of.

Troy shrugs. "I mean, they're not saying it like that, but--"

But yes. As the face of a brand, Kent's not as sparkle-shiny as he'd been even just a year ago, and even with his record, now that he's a known sub, there's a tide of recrimination, blaming Kent for the scandal, blaming the Aces for missing that he'd been a sub the whole time, theorizing that the disgraced As had in fact been running the team because Parson's talent aside he clearly couldn't have been, and in some versions, insistence that Kent was responsible for the end of their careers. Better to keep Kent and his skill on the team, but in a capacity where he'd be less front and center for the public. Sweep him quickly as far under the rug as he'd go, like the whole thing was specifically a Kent Parson problem, and not the end result of a league-wide attitude about subs problem, and move on.

Snowy swears, quietly, but colorfully and long, and Troy picks his drink back up off the grill sideboard to lift it in a mock salute. "Some of the old guys are pissed," he says, before taking a drink. "If it helps. They think it's like lack of responsibility for injury and I don't know. Concussion risks or something."

"Fuck them too," Snowy says.

Kent tosses another match into the grill. This time it catches the edge of some kindling and smokes for a bit longer before puttering out. "I'm not stepping down," he says, sounding stubborn even though he's still not looking at either of them. Snowy's fine with that. It's better than Kent looking to him for permission every third minute, the way he'd been in that hotel, and when he'd been under crushing pressure towards the end of the season. "If the guys want me out, then fine, I won't make a fight of it. I'll do what's good for the team. But if you want me to say it's me, that I want to, because I can't handle the responsibility--"

"No one wants that," Troy interrupts, smooth, hitting the right note of firm and gentle to shut Kent up, and watches as Kent strikes yet another match, then remarks to Snowy," If you have to rely on Parser for fire, you're going to fucking starve to death, man."

"Mostly I rely on delivery," Snowy says, even though he cooks most nights that he's home. "I only rely on Parse for horrible radio presets in my car."

"You fucking love it," Kent grouches, but he lets Troy start messing with the makings of his fire, hop-stepping back to give him room to work. Snowy would love to do something about the way Kent's shoulders are still set like he thinks there's about to be a fight, his chin lifted aggressively. Puffed up in a way that's a lot like his stupid cat encountering Tater for the first time. It's not a good way to leave a sub, and more, not a way Snowy wants to leave _his_ sub, but crutch, stupid hat, and fire starting ineptitude aside, he doesn't want to undermine Kent if Troy's holding any doubt at all about him being a captain and a sub at the same time.

"Anyway," Troy says, removing briquettes from the grill and rearranging whatever else Kent has in there. "They offered me an A."

Kent takes his hat off to run a hand through his hair. "Are you even an Ace?" he asks. 

Snowy laughs. Troy says, "Fuck you, you know I'm an Ace now," and then, "I just--I don't know what you're okay with. I haven't given them an answer."

"You think I'm not okay with--what? You? Replacements?"

"Well, quick and total replacement, maybe. It's very move on, move fast, pretend this was the team the whole time."

"You're the one with a rebound A," Kent points out. "Are _you_ okay with that?"

Troy looks like he's considering it, holding out one hand for Kent's matches, with his drink in the other. The last of his ice cubes clink as he swirls them around. "When you put it like that it's less flattering," he decides. "But yeah, I think I'm okay with that."

Kent tosses him the matches. A crappy lob that almost bounces the box back out of Troy's hand when he tries to grab it. "Then it's good to have you back, Swoops," Kent says. "Even if you still can't catch for shit. It's lucky you play hockey, huh?" Snowy hadn't realized the two of them were close at all. He mostly remembers Troy from that one season, but thinking back, he thinks Troy had stuck around longer than that. At least another season after Snowy had gone to Providence, and maybe another after. Clearly long enough for Kent to be comfortable being an ass to him, and that says a lot of good things about Troy.

"It's lucky I'm here to save you from yourself," Troy returns, putting his drink down again so he can carefully set fire to a few points in the grill before giving the match a quick, snappy wave to snuff the flame out. "Ta-dah."

"You're an asshole," Kent tells him, as Troy starts to add briquettes back in, one at a time, placing them deliberately. "That was my one job."

"Yeah," Troy agrees. "But this means I get to stay for dinner, right?"


End file.
